


A Twist in the Tale

by Pollydoodles



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bob the HYDRA Guard, F/M, Time-Travel(ish), Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 19:09:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6389575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy's helping out whilst Jane does her bit to promote STEM to a class of little girls. They've been tasked with 'Adopt a Soldier', a program that organises letters and care packages to soldiers serving overseas. In the meantime, Jane's working hard on the Einstein-Rosen Bridge theory and when it becomes practical then the program changes quite significantly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Twist in the Tale

March 2016. 

A small smile crossed Darcy’s face, involuntarily, as she looked around the room. She’d been, truth all told, a little reluctant to accompany Jane on her mission to impart the love of science to little girls; for all she supported STEM, Jane and indeed the further education of women in general, Darcy was not good with children. Oh, no. Way not good with children. 

And yet, and yet. From the moment she’d stepped into the classroom, hesitant and lurking in Jane’s shadow, the kids had somehow latched onto her. Weeks later she had to reluctantly admit that the couple of afternoons they spent there considerably brightened her day. Watching over the girls as they scrambled to look at slides and listened intently to Jane talking on and on about the universe and space and all the possibilities that brought; it was mesmerising. Almost made her wish she’d had someone like Jane when she was that age. Almost. 

“Mith Darthy?” She looked down at the small hand tugging hard at the end of her sweater. 

“Yeah, kid?” She answered, looking down and faking a tough-guy expression that fooled no-one, least of all the dark-haired six-year-old who gazed back up at her with a serious face splashed across her little eyes. 

“Will you help me write my letter?” 

“What letter, Beth-a-roo?” Darcy asked, hunkering down to the kid’s level. She had her dark hair in two little pigtails, falling just over her shoulders and giving her an impossibly cute, angelic, look. Darcy knew better. As lovely as Bethany was, she could be a real little devil when she wanted to be. That said, it was a big reason why Darcy liked her so much. Jane said it was because there was a lot of Darcy in the little girl. 

“To my tholdier.” Bethany slipped her small hand into Darcy’s and tugged at it, pulling her in the direction of the small desk that she usually sat at. Oh yeah, Darcy thought. The Adopt-A-Soldier program. Not one of Jane’s ideas, actually, but one that the school had put in place. Jane’s head was far too caught up in the world of astronomy to really consider anything else, let alone entertain the thought of writing to a solider overseas. Unless it was Thor. If he counted as a soldier. If Asgard counted as overseas. Not that Jane and Thor spent their time writing, anyway. She looked over at the brunette, who had a small group of little girls clustered around her, all clamouring for a look into the microscope first. She smiled. 

“Mith Darcy.” The small voice and tugging became firmer. 

“I’m coming kiddo, don’t panic.”

Sprawled across the desk were several sheets of paper, a number of coloured crayons and, pride of place, Bucky Bear. Bucky Bear was Bethany’s most prized possession, a teddy bear clad in black and blue, a little mask tied tightly around its face. She usually lugged it around with her all over the place. Beth insisted he was a grumpy, mean bear, though she loved him desperately. Darcy had always thought behind its little black mask the glassy blue eyes looked kind of sad. 

Then again, she was a sentimental sort. 

“What are you gonna write to your thol- sorry, soldier, Bethy?” Darcy said idly, pulling up a too-small chair next to the desk and easing herself into it gently. The little girl stared back at her solemnly, before picking up a bright blue crayon and grasping at a blank sheet of paper in a contemplative fashion. 

“I’m gonna tell him to keep thafe.” She said firmly. “And that people love him. In cathe he dothen’t know.” 

Darcy felt like she’d been punched in the gut. Of all the things she thought she might get out of the little girl, that wasn’t one of them. Fighting to keep from physically reeling back, she gazed over at the dark head, now bent over her paper, studiously inscribing her chosen words in bright blue waxy crayon. It wasn’t the neatest letter this guy would ever receive, but certainly it would have to be the most heart-felt. 

Swallowing down a small lump in her throat and blinking away the beginnings of empathy tears, Darcy spoke – mainly to distract herself. “So who’re you writing to, Beth, huh? Who’s the lucky guy?” Beth paused in her careful writing, although to Darcy’s eye it appeared she’d managed to scribble slightly off the page. Never mind, he was sure to get the gist of it anyway. 

“Hith name is Thargent Jamth Barnth.” She said carefully, the three words posing her some serious work given her lisp. Darcy frowned. She’d given a once over the list but didn’t recall the name. Not that she had some eidetic memory, but there were definitely no Sergeants on the list. She shrugged. Beth could have an overactive imagination at times. Probably she’d given him a promotion. 

“And I’m thending him Bucky Bear.”

“Wait, you’re doing what?” 

Bethany looked back at her with the resigned expression of someone old far beyond her years and tired of waiting for less intelligent people to keep up. She sighed, audibly. “Bucky Bear,” She explained, slowly. “To look out for him.” She finished with a jut to her lower lip, sticking out slightly in a defiant manner Darcy had learned – at her cost – not to mess with. 

“Well, okay then. If you’re sure?” She said lightly, resting a hand across Bethany’s small shoulders. “You might not get him back though, you know that, right?” The little girl nodded, her head firm and expression serious. With that, she picked back up the crayon and resumed her writing, tongue poking out of one side of her mouth delicately, as she concentrated hard on looping the letters correctly. 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

“Whatcha doin’?” Darcy said cheerfully into Jane’s ear from behind Bucky Bear, waving his small furry paw at her as she spoke. Jane jumped, and turned to her assistant with a frustrated look across her face. Darcy let the bear fall slightly to her chest and hugged him to her, face dropping slightly at the look on her boss’ face. “Um, sorry?” She tried again, and resisted the urge to have Bucky Bear wave again. 

Jane sighed. “Careful, Darce.” She said pointedly, then turned back to the desk and the complicated contraption laid out across it. She twiddled with a knob at one end, then moved across to the other side and twiddled with something else, flicking switches and adjusting levels. Darcy watched, itching to speak again. Eventually, the need to so got the better of her. 

“Am I allowed to ask what it is?” She said lightly, moving around the table until she was opposite Jane, and placing Bucky Bear down carefully on the table, the letter Bethany had carefully scribbled just underneath him. She put her nose close to the centre of the apparatus, breathing in deeply and wrinkling her nose at the strange metallic smell that emanated from it. Sort of metallic but also coppery, it was so strong she felt she could almost taste it on her tongue, and Darcy reeled back slightly in disgust. 

“It’s supposed to be a portable wormhole.” Jane said absent-mindedly, still fiddling and adjusting on the other side. 

“Excuse me?” Darcy yelped, pushing back from the table in alarm. “Should you have that in school, Jane?” Her eyes, wide and worried, met Jane’s slightly confused hazel ones across the desk. 

“S’fine, Darce.” The doctor answered, waved a hand careless over the equipment. “Anyway, it’s not like any of the kids are here now.” 

“Still.” Darcy murmured, coming back closer again, and feeling bad for hoping fervently that the damn thing didn’t work. 

“Anyway,” Jane said brightly, as she ducked under table to flip the socket. “The kids helped put it together.” 

“Do me a favour and never mention that to any of their mothers, will you?” Darcy resisted the urge to physically face-palm herself – or Jane, for that matter – and watched in some trepidation as the machine whirred to life. “I mean, you are aware that if I’m telling you to be careful, this is a pretty awful idea?” Jane hummed in response, and Darcy rolled her eyes, well aware the other woman hadn’t listened to a single word she’d had to say. 

There was a crackle and a spitting sound, then the machine started to hum loudly. Darcy took half a step backwards and Jane rushed to her side excitedly, pushing long strands of light brunette hair behind her ears and over her shoulders. The middle of the contraption was two metal halves, sort of a half circle each but with a large gap in between the two. Electricity, bright blue sparks, began to jump from one side to the other. As the equipment wound up, the sparks moved faster and faster until there was no break between the sides at all. 

Both women leaned closer, Jane in excitement, Darcy despite herself. 

A small black hole opened in the middle of the blue lightning. 

“Yes!” Jane shouted, jumping up and knocking the table as she did so. She grabbed Darcy around the middle and danced her in a circle, two, three, four times. Darcy laughed and jumped as well, both of them bouncing and giggling and twirling madly in the abandoned classroom. “Oh look, look,” Jane breathed, stopping abruptly and gazing into the little black hole that was held suspended between the two metal sides. 

She had her face in her palms, elbows on the table, leaned across and staring at it in abject wonder. Darcy giggled and threw herself next to Jane, also looking into the small black space. It seemed strange, like an absence of being rather than the presence of something. She supposed that was quite possibly the point – it was the absence of Earth, maybe of their universe as they knew it. A tiny window into a whole other world, and who knew what might be staring back at them on the other side. 

She shivered slightly at that, the memory of a huge metal fire-breathing man bearing down on her and her friends, and drew back from the table unconsciously. As she did so, she realised that something was missing. 

“Hey, Jane?” She said, looking around them as she spoke, trying to keep panic from her voice as she asked the question. The other woman hummed in response and Darcy resisted the urge to shake her hard. “You seen a teddy bear about? Like, yea-high? Got a little mask? Oh, and a letter as well?”

Jane finally looked up at her, registering the edge to Darcy’s voice which had turned steely. “Mmmmm?” She asked, dazedly, and Darcy knew she’d been contemplating the furthest reaches of space and all the possibilities rolled up into that. “A bear?” 

“Yes, Jane, a bear,” She repeated impatiently, and dropped to her knees to search under the table, even though she could see perfectly well from where she was that the floor was completely clear. “And a letter.” She sat back on her heels and ran a sweaty hand through her long hair. She breathed deeply, trying to convince herself that the awful, awful possibility was not turning out to be a pretty definite probability. 

“There’s nothing up here, Darce.” Jane said, looking down at her with sorrowful hazel eyes. Darcy swore loudly and popped back up next to Jane. She cast her eye over the desk but couldn’t find anything that would contradict the boss lady’s affirmation. She swore again, hands on hips. 

“You think…?” Jane said hesitantly, and her eyes flickered towards the little black hole and the crackling blue light surrounding it. Darcy sucked in a breath and then nodded slowly. Jane’s face fell, and they both turned to look at it in despair. 

“Where-“ Darcy broke off. “Where d’you think it might-“

“No idea.” Jane said quietly. 

They stared at the equipment in silence. 

\--- --- --- --- --- --- 

March 1946.

“So what do you do with the mail?”

“Mail?” The guard turned to the first guard with what would have been an incredulous look, had either of them been able to see the others’ face under their standard issue helmets. The first guard shifted uncomfortable from one foot to the other, his gun heavy against his shoulder. 

“Yeah… Mail.” He replied, innocently. 

There was a pregnant pause in the air before the other man spoke again; both of them could hear the dripping of water from the ceiling of the dark, dank tunnel in which they were stationed, dropping from the ceiling to the cold stone floor rhythmically. 

“There is no mail, Bob.” The second guard’s voice dripped with sarcasm as he responded. Seriously, he thought to himself, despairingly. Where the hell do they find these people? Rent-a-cop? There’s no respect for the job anymore. He just about stopped himself from shaking his head. 

“Yeah, but…” The first guard trailed off as the unseen glare from underneath the other man’s helmet intensified. “What if there was mail? What would you do with it?”

A deep sigh emanated from the other side of the steel door and the second guard’s gun dropped slightly as his shoulders shrugged in defeat. “What would I do with the hypothetical mail that our asset hypothetically would never receive, because he’s very much not hypothetically known to the world, you mean?”

The first guard nodded enthusiastically in response. 

The second guard resisted the urge to gun him down. 

“Well,” He said, in a dangerous sing-song voice. “I’d open the door, give it to him; and then invite him for a tea party.” The other guard was nodding along intently, until he finished. “Because both are about as likely to happen, idiot.” He punctuated the last word with a short blow to the back of the first guard’s helmet. 

Bob, the first guard, shuffled back to his side of the door and glanced over at the other man. “Alright,” He said resentfully. “I was just askin’, is all.” 

“But why?” Snapped the other guard, readjusting his machine gun across his chest in irritation, and throwing the other man a look he sure hoped the guy realised was one of disgust from the other side of the door. 

“Because he got one.” Bob snapped back, having grown tired of the sarcasm and hostility. This isn’t what I signed up for, he thought morosely to himself. Join HYDRA they said, see the world. Hurrumpf. See the inside of the same damn corridor day in, day out more like, he thought. Guard some flipping vegetable for months on end, and then the one time something interesting happens, get shit for it-

“What did you say?” The other guard was in his face, interrupting his self-pitying internal monologue and machine gun barrel jutting uncomfortably into his gut as the other man got in close. He’d flipped the helmet up, revealing dark features set in face much younger than Bob would have guessed, from his cynical attitude and world-weary tone. 

“A letter,” Bob mumbled, the words almost dying on his tongue as they formed, somehow scared of this younger man all up in his face. “You know, addressed to him.” He accompanied his last with a thumb jerked over his shoulder and at the thick steel door behind them. The other man’s eyes narrowed. 

“We don’t get mail.” He said, sure of himself, but a slightly waver tinging the end of the sentence. Whether the waver was through fear or something else, he wasn’t entirely certain. 

“Well, he did,” Bob said simply, shrugging his shoulders in a universal gesture of not-my-damn-fault. “It was on the floor. Had his name on, and everything.”

“And you did what with it, exactly?” The machine gun was jabbing into his stomach again, but this time it was less by accident and more because the other man was purposely pointing it at him. Bob started to sweat, could feel little droplets of water running down his back under his ill-fitting uniform – yet another point in the column of reasons why HYDRA sucked, he’d complained to his wife just last night at dinner – and rolling uncomfortably into his underwear. 

“Slid it under the door.” Bob squeaked, eyes half-shut as he answered, trying not to breathe in the other man’s bad breath as he exhaled all over Bob’s face, panting heavily. 

“You did what?”

There was another long pause. Bob sighed. 

“Is this the right time to mention there was a teddy bear as well?”

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

March 2015.

Bucky didn’t remember much, not really. Snatches of this and that, oftentimes memories dancing just out of reach as he slept fitfully in whatever nook or cranny he could find. Five minutes here, twenty minutes there – he figured he’d spent more than enough of his life asleep already that he could afford to miss out now. That much, at least, he remembered. 

He couldn’t always tell what was real and what wasn’t; but when the nightmares came, the ones that he awoke from soaked in sweat but feeling like it was blood, those ones he couldn’t help but believe were real. He knew enough to know that he’d been on the side of evil, but that wasn’t the thing that concerned him most. No, no – the thing that caused him the most heartache was that when his eyes sprang open in the early hours and his brown was beaded with sweat, his heart was thumping from excitement at what he’d been witness to in his dreams, not in horror. 

That scared him more than anything he might remember. 

When that happened, he’d open his rucksack, the one he’d stolen from a picture-house, having hidden out there in the back row, safe and warm in the dark and frankly amazed at the scenes that danced across the screen in front of him. Someone had left the rucksack by mistake and, before they’d the chance to come back for it, he’d taken it. Emptied out the contents – nothing of note, a wallet (he stripped it of cash, he was a thief; that much he could attest to, and not an idiot who would leave his things carelessly lying around, he thought), a phone, some personal items he’d left discarded on the sticky theatre floor. 

And a blank notebook.

Into it, he’d placed the only things that he knew for sure belonged to him. 

A tatty, dog-eared and well-read letter, and an even tattier teddy bear. It had originally worn a mask, but that was ripped and torn and all but hanging off, having survived somehow all these years. It had been a light brown, more or less, when it had been shoved under his cell door, but was now a darker grey colour. Bit of fur were missing, here and there – some lost over time, and some of it simply loved off by Bucky himself. It was the only touch of comfort he’d had over the long years and he’d guarded it jealously. 

He’d called it Stevie; all those years ago without really understanding why he’d been driven to it. Staring up at what was supposed to be his own face, and that of a big muscular blond man in the midst of crowds of people in DC, an inkling of why he had chosen that name came filtering through his brain. It sparked little memories he hadn’t ever realised he’d retained, little scenes and snippets that for all the machinery and electrodes they’d strapped on him over the years, hadn’t been erased. 

Stevie. Steve. Steven Grant Rogers, according to the fancy inscribed glass wall in front of him. The man had been his first comfort, and so this little tatty teddy bear, his only – dare he even think the word? Yes, he supposed he might – friend over the many years he’d been forced to live, had become Stevie also. Tucked carefully into his backpack at all times, along with the increasingly worn letter than had arrived with the bear. 

The letter. 

Scribbled near-illegibly across the faded paper, once bright and white and clean, shining against the dank cell he’d been locked up in; now brown and curling slightly at the edges; the blue writing was almost gone. It didn’t matter, Bucky had long since committed it all to memory. Sometimes he’d found himself mouthing it as he lay on his back, looking up at another unfamiliar ceiling or occasionally at the stars. 

You are not alone.  
Keep safe.   
You are loved.   
He will protect you. 

By whom, he had etched across his memory also. Bethany Cole, aged six. And here was the odd thing – the oddest of all, even stranger than the assertion that someone, somewhere, loved him – it was dated seventy years in the future. Still, he’d supposed. He was a man out of time, fitted with a metal arm, wired right into his nervous system and bolted to his goddamn skeleton; wiped and re-wiped and kept on ice – why shouldn’t a letter arrive with his name scrawled across it from a future he wasn’t even sure he’d live to see?

If he did though, he’d find her. 

\--- --- --- --- --- --- 

March 2016. 

The door slammed open and through it strode a dark-haired man, his gait purposeful and – dare Darcy say it – military in origin. She pressed herself against the white board and resisted the urge to cross herself. 

“Can I… Help you?” She edged out, doubtfully, unsure if he were dangerous or not. Whatever he was, he sure as hell didn’t look as though he belonged in a school. Darcy fumbled behind herself and found with grasping fingertips the board eraser. Internally, she sighed. She was hardly able to defend herself anyway, and there was little to no chance she’d be able to do anything with an eraser. 

He turned to look at her, and she was struck by the shadows in his eyes. He looked to be around thirty, maybe slightly younger, but those eyes – god those eyes told a whole other story. Had she only those to go on, she’d pitch him much older. Definitely military, she thought. The ol’ thousand yard stare that so many people talked about, although she’d never seen it in person. 

“Uh,” He mumbled, and his voice was low and gravelly, jaw working overtime as he spoke, as though he were unused to using it for speaking. Darcy felt her heart constrict in empathy, and let go of the eraser. Her mother’s voice screamed at her from inside her head, telling her she was an idiot and that she should make a run for it, now. Ignoring that, possibly to her detriment, Darcy pushed herself off the board, squared up and set her shoulders back. 

“Beth-Bethany?” The low voice rumbled again, sounding harsh in the colourful little classroom. A voice that was never meant to be heard in such a place, she thought to herself unwittingly. 

“Bethany?” She said, jaw dropping slightly and voice coloured with confusion, her head tilting to one side as she regarded him. Her eyes swept over the man and it was then that she noticed he was clutching a small teddy bear – a teddy bear that, if worn and abused and extremely dirty – she actually recognised. 

“Bucky Bear!” She exclaimed, eyes on the teddy bear and the man stepped back slightly in alarm at the pitch of her voice. Her hands came up subconsciously and she stepped towards him, smiled reaching from one side of her face to the other. The dark-haired man shrank back, unsure and unused to such onslaught of positive emotion. “Where did you find him?” Her blue eyes met his and he reached with one hand to tug down the baseball cap that half-covered his face anyway, trying to build a barrier between this enthusiastic girl and himself. 

“I- uh-“ He stuttered, bringing the bear up to his chest defensively and clutching Stevie to him like some kind of protection. “How do you know my name?”

“Your name?” Darcy repeated wrinkling her nose. 

“I’m-“ He looked down shyly, then back up at her again, and she felt her heart constrict in a whole other way. Jesus, Darcy, are you freaking mental? The angel on her shoulder metaphorically slapped her. This guy’s name is spelt with a capital Danger, you can see it’s written all the way through him, just from the way he walked in the door. The devil on the other shoulder stayed ominously silent, though Darcy was pretty sure that was because it was eyeing up the way the man filled out his red Henley and the way his chest muscles strained against the backpack that was clipped across it. 

“I’m Bucky.”

“Oh.” Was all Darcy could find to say in response to that statement. What else could she really say, in the face of a scruffy dude who’d turned up a day after she was pretty sure her brilliant but physically awkward boss had accidentally knocked her favourite kid’s favourite bear right into an open wormhole; clutching said bear which looked very much as though it had been dragged through an actual war. 

Totally leaving aside the fact that this strange man somehow had the same name as the bear. Come to think of it, Darcy mused, they both looked the same amount of scruffy. As her head tilted again, her mind lost and absent-mindedly scrawling through abstract thoughts, several loud cracks shattered through the air. And, indeed, the windows. 

“What the-“ She managed, before another body hit her own and slammed her into the floor. Except, she didn’t quite hit the parquet, as just before she really should have been strawberry jelly right across it, the other body twisted and turned and she hit that instead of the ground. Looking up, she realised that the man – Bucky – had his arms tight around her body and was bracing himself against the floor. 

“Under the desk.” He grunted, and rolled her in that direction. Darcy hit the floor and twisted, palms flat against the parquet and eyes wide. He crouched next to her, one hand on the floor and one grasping at the edge of the wooden desk. The gunfire continued, and Darcy flinched as glass rained in from the outside of the windows, shattering across the desks and cascading across the floor. It could almost be pretty. 

“What the ever-loving fu-“ She began again heatedly, and a hand was pressed firmly against her mouth, effectively cutting her off. Darcy gasped against the hand, which, she had to say, wasn’t exactly clean. 

“I have to go.” He said roughly, hand still across her face, eyes darting from window to window. No shit, Darcy thought to herself. Pretty sure my goddamned classroom would still be intact if you hadn’t come barrelling into it. S’not like anyone has any reason to shoot at me. Well… I guess there was that one time-

He was shoving something into her arms, finally lifting his hand from her mouth. She grasped at it, and realised it was the bear. “You know her, yes?” He said quickly, still scoping out the windows and the door. “Bethany?” Darcy nodded, bringing the bear to her chest and hugging it tightly. “Give it back to her. Tell her- tell her he kept me going. Even in the darkest days.”

Darcy forced herself up into a sitting position, still clutching at the teddy bear, and opened her mouth to respond but he’d gone – thrown himself from a running start right out of the window closest to them and she brought her own hand to her mouth then – they were three floors up. She scrunched her eyes shut and wished she could do the same to her eyes, sure she’d hear a sickening splat against the concrete below, but when it didn’t come, she scrambled commando-style to the window and peeped out. In the distance she could see a small figure, running full pelt, backpack bouncing as his legs pumped. 

“Bethany …” She breathed. “Who the hell did you write to?”


End file.
